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WASHINGTON, DC, August 30, 2005 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- Eleven EPA employee unions representing over 7000 environmental and public health professionals of the Civil Service have called for a moratorium on drinking water fluoridation programs across the country, and have asked EPA management to recognize fluoride as posing a serious risk of causing cancer in people. The unions acted following revelations of an apparent cover-up of evidence from Harvard School of Dental Medicine linking fluoridation with elevated risk of a fatal bone cancer in young boys.

The unions sent letters to key Congressional committees asking Congress to legislate a moratorium pending a review of all the science on the risks and benefits of fluoridation. The letters cited the weight of evidence supporting a classification of fluoride as a likely human carcinogen, which includes other epidemiology results similar to those in the Harvard study, animal studies, and biological reasons why fluoride can reasonably be expected to cause the bone cancer - osteosarcoma - seen in young boys and test animals.

The unions also pointed out recent work by Richard Maas of the Environmental Quality Institute, University of North Carolina that links increases in lead levels in drinking water systems to use of silicofluoride fluoridating agents with chloramines disinfectant.

The letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson asked him to issue a public warning in the form of an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking setting the health-based drinking water standard for fluoride at zero, as it is for all known or probable human carcinogens, pending a recommendation from a National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council committee. That committee's work is not expected to be done before 2006.

The unions also asked Congress and EPA's enforcement office, or the Department of Justice, to look into reasons why the Harvard study director, Chester Douglass, failed to report the seven-fold increased risk seen in the work he oversaw, and instead wrote to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the federal agency that funded the Harvard study, saying there was no link between fluoridation and osteosarcoma. Douglass sent the same negative report to the National Research Council committee studying possible changes in EPA's drinking water standards for fluoride.

The unions who signed the letters represent EPA employees from across the nation, including laboratory scientists in Ohio, Oklahoma and Michigan, regulatory support scientists and other workers at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. and science and regulatory workers in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and San Francisco.

They are affiliated with the National Treasury Employees Union, the American Federation of Government Employees, Engineers and Scientists of California/International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, and the National Association of Government Employee/Service Employees International Union.

USA Citizens can easily back-up the 7,000 EPA 'career employees.' Consider, you and your family need CLEAN & SAFE Drinking Water, every day. This is your opportunity to back those 7000+ EPA union members that care about scientific integrity and exposing the truth about 'corporate hazardous waste fluorosilicates' being metered into our drinking waters. Their common sense demand for a 'moratorium on fluoridation' along with Congressional Investigation incl. 'under oath' hearings is critical!

We, the undersigned, join with members of eleven EPA unions in their call for an immediate Congressional act placing a national moratorium on water fluoridation pending a full Congressional investigation into this public policy, which affects - directly and indirectly - every resident of the United States.

Sodium fluoride has been and is still used as an insecticide. It's use for human consumption has been banned in other countries, still other countries have lowered allowed water levels of fluoride.

--------------------Money doesn't grow on trees, but deficits do grow under Bushes.

You can accept, reject, or examine and test any new idea that comes to you. The wise man chooses the third way.- Tom Willhite

Disclaimer: I reserve the right to change my opinions should I become aware of additional facts, the falsification of information or different perspectives. Articles written by others which I post may not necessarily reflect my opinions in part or in whole, my opinions may be in direct opposition, the topic may be one on which I have yet to formulate an opinion or have doubts about, an article may be posted solely with the intent to stimulate discussion or contemplation.

Quote:Phred said:And yet again we see a totally bullshit headline. Nowhere in the article is there mention of even one "EPA scientist" issuing a warning on fluoride use

Ahem...

Quote:EPA Scientists . . . Call for an End to Water Fluoridation Because of Cancer Risk

Reading comprehension...What was the article about?It was about EPA employees (including scientists) asking their boss through their unions to reconsider the issue of fluoridation.

Now, there is one point of wriggle room (I know you Pinky) - the phrase "issue a warning". The letter is a request to reconsider the issue of fluoridation "based on the overall weight of the evidence supporting the classification of fluoride as a human carcinogen".

This can be considered a warning, particularly as the letter is public.

I agree that fluorine use is probably not a good idea (especially because of where the fluorine comes from and lack of proper controls on the additives). However, I have to also call bullshit on the article title.

The EPA union has 7,000+ members but only a fraction of them are scientists and only a fraction of those are PhD level (as far as I know). Maybe it is nitpicking but I am the type who thinks that journalists who intentionally word articles to promote a viewpoint do a disservice to all those who hold the same view and try to legitimately back it up.

All that being said, this is a pretty big deal and worthy of public attention.

It's a bullshit headline. No EPA scientist issued a warning, pure and simple. Please cut and paste for us the part of the article that describes any scientist who works for the EPA issuing a warning....................

*sound of crickets chirping* ..............

The only scientists mentioned in relation to the studies are scientists who don't work for the EPA.

And as Catalysis points out, there aren't "thousands of scientists" working for the EPA anyway.

Quote:All that being said, this is a pretty big deal and worthy of public attention.

Meh.

They've been studying fluoridated water for half a century or so. Every so often some kerfuffle makes the news, the methodolgy is checked through peer review and found to be flawed, and the issue drops off the radar screen till the next guy makes the same baseless charges.

One thing that may have some validity is the combination of fluorides with chloramines (a relatively recent development -- at the time I left Canada in the late Eighties municipalities were just switching over from chlorine to chloramine -- and may many municipalities never made the switch) leaching lead from ancient pipes. I'm not going to make a judgment one way or the other on that since I haven't seen a study on it yet and don't recall enough of my inorganic chemistry to know if such a reaction is possible.

Even then, if your house doesn't have lead pipes (and very very few do these days) there's nothing to worry about.

Thats true. There are a ton of variables to account for when studying drinking water. As a biochemist, I find it highly improbable that fluorine alone, at low levels, is a carcinogen. The way that it affects bone is completely different from what would be considered carcinogenic activity. If cancer was ever linked to fluorinated water, I would bet anything that it is due to the contaminants in the fluorine source. The amount of fluorine needed to keep levels up in water supplies means they cannot use the appropriate, yet costly purification processes necessary to ensure a clean source. I do know that it can cause fluorosis and I think it probably is totally unnecessary in the water supply of a developed nation.

I don't understand why we are forced to drink flouride in our water, no matter what the scientific conclusion is about it. It just doesn't make sense, why add something to water, when water is just fine on its own.

If you want fluoride in your water you should be able to buy it at walmart and add it yourself. I'd rather not have it, instead of waiting to figure out if its bad for you or not. Plus im sure adding it to the water isn't free either, someone is paying for that. Probably us tax payers

--------------------"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Former Director, CIA